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Netflix Gets What It Pays For: Comcast Streaming Speeds Skyrocket
jfruh (300774) writes "Back in February, after a lengthy dispute, Netflix agreed to pay Comcast for network access after being dogged by complaints of slow speeds from Comcast subscribers. Two months later, it appears that Comcast has delivered on its promises, jumping up six places in Netflix's ISP speed rankings. The question of whether this is good news for anyone but Comcast is still open."
Fuck Comcast
I hope we at least have water neutrality where we don't get charged more for using water for showering as opposed to washing the car. thats where its all going folks.
it's barely been a month & comcast's already completed all those network upgrades? you know, all that capital investment that was required b/c of netflix that they didn't have the $ for until a month ago? that's impressively fast considering how long it takes them to fix the most basic problems for individual customers!
Obviously Netflix will just pass the cost on to its subscribers (where else would they get the money from?). It's very unlikely they'd implement this as a surcharge for their Comcast subscribers only (I wish they would, but I expect their contract with Comcast prohibits it), they'll just absorb it into the single subscription price. So in fact non-Comcast customers will effectively be indirectly paying Comcast to subsidise other users' access.
From an engineer's point of view it's all baffling (Netflix and their customers are both paying for a certain amount of bandwidth, so where's the need for anything more?), but when you view it through the lens of capitalist incentives it all makes perfect sense.
Sums it up nicely.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
This is ground zero for the net neutrality fight. We need strong Net Neutrality to keep this BS from happening. Comcast is gaining a position where it will implicitly own a share of every company delivering service to its customers. The Comcast and TWC merger is going to make things infinitely worse.
If Netflix wants unlimited bandwidth access to Comcast customers, they need to pony up. Comcast provided access to the web and Netflix was in the equivalent of Internet BFE on the Cogent network. Maybe Netflix should stop going with the lowest bidder for bandwidth, then they might not have these problems.
What Netflix is paying for, is a bribery fee so that Comcast quit throttling them. The proof?
As soon as the agreement was reached, I could finally stream Netflix in 3D. Oh, and we all know they didn't get their peering equipment in within 3 days....
Capitalism, american capitalism, basically encourages this twisted practice of squeezing as much cash by hook or by crook out of anyone even remotely related to your service. Looking to companies to solve the problem is like looking at a cigarette lighter to fix your burning house.
br. America has no recourse for evil companies, in fact it prides itself on this fact.
Good people go to bed earlier.
The ads, or how bad Hulu is, is completely unrelated to the topic WaywardGeek was bringing up.
I assume they meant to ask, what happens with Netflix 2, when there is some new streaming service that's even BETTER than Netflix in every way. Will they also have to go through the same growing pains, eventually forking over cash to get access to the "full internet"?
If you have a company and pay for Internet connectivity, then you already paying what is necessary for that volume of data. The speed should be the same for everyone. Otherwise new businesses cannot form on the net on equal terms. This is important for freedom and even for the market economy. However, without net neutrality will end up in a time of monopoly (or oligopoly). Only this time the monopoly is not governed by the state and at least in theory controlled by the public.
For the US, dropping net neutrality makes sense from a corporate state viewpoint, as all big Internet services are US-based (beside those in China). If you hinder any other new service you can guarantee that those corporations stay in business, because the ramp up cost for new players would be too high. Also peer-to-peer technologies which could flourish with IPv6 can be crippled right before they become dangerous for the establishment.
I'm beginning to wonder if Netflix did this on purpose, to gain sympathy and to highlight the actual problems around net-neutrality.
It makes sense, instead of making bold claims about what might happen, they went ahead and just let it happen..
It's sort of like a person going into a bad neighborhood, getting roughed up and then telling everyone about how much of a bad part of town that was, look he's even a victim!
This chart is easy to show to politicians and policymakers, and it exposes the simple fact that Comcast clearly **had** the capacity before these payments, they were just withholding.
Personally, I think it's a very smart move on Netflix's part, they are playing the long game.
Not to mention the fact that the part of the internet NOT controlled by Comcast didn't have the same issues experienced by Comcast customers -- which shows that the issue was at some level, Comcast's problem. Of course, the real issue was their peering agreement with Cogent (who didn't have such issues with others, but Comcast must have, as it would have only been a few hops to route around the peering issue).
In other words, Comcast is looking like a gated intranet, and Netflix has now paid for the access keys in a way that ISPs refused to do. I predict that soon you'll see ads saying "blazing fast speeds within the Comcast Network". So much for net neutrality.
It's worse, to some degree.
With cable TV, the providers only have limited information about who is watching. With streaming video, they can gather much more demographic information, which they can either use themselves or resell to "business partners". It's yet another form of income for them. So Hulu (and similar services) are triple-dipping; they charge the viewer cash for the privilege of watching, then get paid for the adverts, then resell the collected demographics. The viewer pays in money, time, and privacy.